LAWJOBS.COM S.F. BAY AREA JOB LISTINGS

July 15, 2011

A Chicago law firm is going after grandma and her alleged online porn habit.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Steele Hansmeier has filed a lawsuit against “Does 1-46” -– including one the Chronicle describes as a Bay Area widow in her 70s -- in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Hard Drive Productions.

Steele Hansmeier accuses the Bay Area woman and scores of other “digital pirates” across the country of downloading porn illegally over BitTorrent. They’re being urged by Steele Hansmeier attorneys to settle with the originators of the content by ponying up several thousand dollars by credit card.

The Bay Area Jane Doe tells the Chronicle she has never downloaded porn and doesn’t even know what a BitTorrent is. She can’t afford an attorney to make her case, but she won’t settle either, she told the Chronicle. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes such lawsuits as "copyright trolling," and EFF attorney Matthew Zimmerman said the porn allegations add a further "coercive element," the Chronicle reported.

Steele Hansmeier, which describes itself as a law firm dedicated to eradicating digital piracy, says on its website (wefightpiracy.com) that it focuses on representing content producers and creative professionals. It’s unclear how many lawyers it employs.

October 18, 2010

It was a somber yet joyful day for Fuzzy Renfrew, Goofy Gerstein and Fat Ass Bakar.

On Monday they eulogized William Coblentz as a lion of the San Francisco bar, a former regent of the University of California, a shaper of San Francisco's skyline, and a man with a penchant for handing out silly nicknames.

"My name is Charlie Renfrew -- better known to all of you as Fuzzy," was how the former federal judge and Coblentz law partner introduced himself to a nearly packed Herbst Theater.

Coblentz, patriarch of the firm known today as Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass, died last month at 88. He was remembered as a man who wanted to make the world a better place -- and had the political capital to do it.

"No issue was too large or too small for Bill," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who recalled that as a member of the S.F. Airport Commission, Coblentz had pushed through free luggage carts for international passengers. Part of the airport's Terminal 2 has been named in Coblentz's honor.

Several speakers recalled Coblentz's clashes with then-Gov. Ronald Reagan during the 1960s. Law school classmate Bakar -- true first name Gerson -- said that despite their disagreements on issues like affirmative action, Reagan and Coblentz maintained a cordial relationship.

Private equity magnate Warren Hellman, who gave his eulogy in verse, framed it slightly differently: "As chair of the regents he really was swell/He told the governor to go straight to hell."

Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley recalled the moral support Coblentz gave during UC's funding crisis -- "about persevering in the face of what in the last couple of years has looked like a pretty daunting challenge." There was financial support too, in the form of the William K. Coblentz Civil Rights Endowment Fund at Boalt Hall.

"As much as we miss you," Edley said, "you'll continue to do good for all of us, as you always did."

August 24, 2010

The First District Court of Appeal has termed out S.F. Supervisor Michaela Alioto-Pier.

Barring last-minute intervention by the California Supreme Court, Alioto-Pier will not be allowed to seek re-election election to her District 2 seat this November. The First District reversed Superior Court Judge Peter Busch on Tuesday afternoon, ruling that because Alioto-Pier has served one full term plus three-quarters of another, she is termed out under the S.F. charter.

Alioto-Pier has argued that because she was appointed to part of her first term and elected to the rest, it did not count as a full term for purposes of San Francisco's term limits law. Both City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Roger Arntz, director of the city's elections department, disagreed with that interpretation. So did the First District.

"Twenty years ago the voters of San Francisco imposed term limits on their supervisors, so that 'no person elected or appointed' could serve 'more than two successive four-year terms,' " Justice James Richman wrote, "and a person appointed to complete more than two years 'would be deemed to have served one full term,' with his or her service rounded up." Although voters have amended the language on several occasions, "nothing changed the rounding up provision."

November 25, 2009

Julius Young scours the news and analyzes political developments every week for updates on workers’ compensation law. He’s been doing it for three years, having closely watched the “upheaval” created by workers’ compensation reforms in 2004. “I saw a space where some of the other types of commentators or journals dealing with workers’ comp weren’t covering it in the way it should be covered,” says Young, a partner at Oakland’s Boxer & Gerson.

October 26, 2009

The ACLU of Northern California has waded into a battle that prominently features the ever-colorful Willie Brown.

In a proposed amicus brief (.pdf), ACLU lawyers argued against a gag order sought by Brown’s client, Monica Ung, from an Alameda County Superior Court judge. She faces dozens of felony fraud charges after allegedly paying the workers at her construction firm, NBC Contractors, well below the prevailing wage on at least 27 public works projects, as well as defrauding taxpayers.

The proposed gag order shows a “shocking disregard” for First Amendment values, ACLU lawyers Alan Schlosser and Ajay Kundaria argued in the amicus brief. The lawyers also discount Ung’s argument for a gag order based on the notion that Brown has been harassed over his representation of Ung (i.e. through phone calls to his law office that Ung claims were organized one day last August by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 595 and Oakland labor lawyer Ellyn Moscowitz.* Moscowitz had filed a class action on behalf of former NBC workers in 2008, which is currently held in abeyance).

Brown, the ACLU lawyers argued, “must expect that his actions will draw public attention and scrutiny.”

Ung's motion describes a number of "vigilante activities" that the ACLU brief swats down as insufficient reasons to grant the gag order. These activities, according to the brief, include the union and Moscowitz setting up a website, sending out Twitter updates, and encouraging attendance at court hearings.

The motion is before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Roy Hashimoto, according to a news release issued by Moscowitz and the union.

* Update:A press person working with Moscowitz says the attorney was not a party to the phone calls made to Brown’s office, and adds that the class action lawsuit is not held in abeyance. A mediation and a motion for class certification is scheduled for Nov. 13.

October 20, 2009

The streets are buzzing with word that San Francisco’s Folger Levin & Kahn is in advanced merger talks with Crowell & Moring, a Washington, D.C.-based firm with more than 450 lawyers.

We have yet to get confirmation from the firms that they are talking, but knowledgeable sources outside the firms have been hearing about it. Crowell & Moring partners we reached said our questions would best be answered by the press department or the firm’s chairman, Kent Gardiner, who hasn’t gotten back to us. A Crowell D.C. spokeswoman neither confirmed nor denied talks. Folger lawyers, including the name partners and managing partner, have been mum.

One lawyer familiar with Folger, who believed it was a done deal, said word had first leaked out about a month ago. Now, that lawyer said, there appears to be turmoil inside Folger. Lawyers there are split between those who see the possibilities of joining a bigger firm with offices as far as Brussels and London and those who feel their best opportunities lie in striking out on their own.

Another lawyer on the outside said the mood seems to have shifted inside the firm. “I think people are sad.” Some are looking for other opportunities, the lawyer said.

October 05, 2009

Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly hadn’t wanted to announce his retirement so long before the end of his term, but he did anyway last Thursday at a fundraising party for his chosen replacement, Dan O’Malley. He told the Contra Costa Times then that he’s focused on the office’s fiscal crisis.

"I still have 15 months, so hopefully we'll be in better position than we are now," Kochly told the paper. "If I had my druthers I wouldn't have announced yet, but I understand there’s others chomping at the bit."

O’Malley, now a lawyer with Concord criminal defense firm O’Connor, Runckel & O’Malley, is a former Contra Costa Superior Court judge and brother to Alameda’s new DA, Nancy O’Malley. Danville lawyer Elle Falahat and Deputy District Attorney Mark Peterson, who serves on the Concord City Council, have also announced they’re running for DA.

The Times’ political blog
called Kochly’s plan to retire “one of the worst-kept secrets in Contra Costa politics.” The blog also reported an awkward laugh Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf got at O’Malley’s campaign kick-off party when he tacked on a quick reference to the potential for electing a female DA. “We need district attorneys in the model of Bill O’Malley, Gary Yancey and Bob Kochly that are honorable men….and women,” he said, according to the blog.